Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

We spent several nights over several weeks moving mattresses, carpet, blankets, car batteries, battery-powered space heaters, wood, water barrels, beams to reinforce the cave, and other supplies from various stores and homes in Estes Park. My architectural skillset finally made me of some value and, paired with Sam’s experience building the Dakota bunker with his dad, we resourcefully built our own “Man Cave.”

The supplies were easy to find in an abandoned town. It was getting in and out around the troop visits, and the nearly half-mile climb carrying supplies from the base of the Alluvial Fan, that was the challenge. But we brought anything we thought could be of use. We explored the stores, packed what we could, moved it out, and dragged it up to our cave.

Fully stocked, we then turned to hiding two of the trucks a few miles up the road. We went as far as we could in the snow that had already fallen and parked them under an old picnic shelter, deliberately collapsing it to cover the vehicles. No one would pass or look there in mid-winter, but we continued to take every precaution.

We pulled the best four-by-four we had, the new Ford, up into the woods about a half-mile from our cave. We attached a snowplow extension onto the front and spray-painted every inch of the truck white: exterior, hubcaps, wheels and all. We covered it with white tarps and put it in a position where it could be started and driven in a straight line down to Old Fall River Road, and used in an emergency to clear a path. With our gear in place we began the extensive process of covering every trace of our existence.

The cave turned out awesome! Inside we braced the ceiling with constructive supports and mining posts. We spent two weeks digging out every ounce of dirt and loose rock, nearly doubling the original size of the cave, and then cemented the ceiling and walls. We made the front entrance much smaller and built in ten-inch tall screened air ducts across the entry floor.

We had picked up a variety of stone-shaped outdoor speakers from a gardening store in Estes Park, removed their electronic cores, and cemented those outside the channel vents to aid with the airflow. We surrounded those converted speakers with large rocks and then covered them with more rocks. Small fans were connected to each of the speaker vents across the “front door” to disperse the escaping heat more sporadically so it wouldn’t be noticeable from drones passing above. We made sure we left the back entrance mostly open with a makeshift screen door to always allow a little fresh air to pass through the cave.

Dad and Sam even built a wooden door for the front entrance, and plastered it with rocks to make it appear as if there was no entrance at all. We insulated the walls with mattresses, thick glass panels, and multiple layers of commercial foam. Danny told us thick glass tended to reflect thermal scans, so we made the extra effort to get it up to the cave. That crap was heavy! We even put carpet on the floors, thick carpet. Layers and layers of it. I’m not kidding when I said we brought everything up here we thought we could use. Since it made sense for everyone to sleep on the floors, in the two smaller rooms the carpet was almost a foot thick. Emily loved it. Kids .

In the end we had a twenty-five-by-forty-foot main area with about an eight foot ceiling, two small rooms about 150 square feet each with six foot ceilings, and a small ascending tunnel that was only about five feet tall but nearly forty yards long with a back entrance to our best vantage point of the area. It was about 150 yards west to the Roaring River from our front door, most of it under the cover of trees except for the last thirty yards or so, where we had to cross the main path to get to water. That was our point of greatest concern.

Our path came out next to a large pool, a small waterfall, and another smaller pool above a giant waterfall. The smaller pool had two large rocks hanging over it, with a small natural shelter carved underneath. Danny sank four nylon fish cages to the bottom of the pool beneath that rock, well hidden, and we used those cages for ‘refrigeration.’ We cleaned whatever food needed to be cleaned there as well. It was a natural ‘kitchen.’ Beyond the kitchen and the couple holes we’d dug as restrooms in the woods, the rest of our Horseshoe Park existence was confined to the cave.

We were a ways from the center of town, about a seven-mile walk, but we couldn’t risk staying any closer. From where we were we could see every helicopter come in and every drone pass overhead. It would be difficult for anyone to sneak up on us from below and impossible to come in from above. Our “backyard” was nothing more than steep, rugged rock. It was called Bighorn Mountain for the terrain. Sheep loved it. People not so much.

Given the circumstances, life in Horseshoe Park was near perfect until the last week of November, when two helicopters landed at the base of the waterfall and deposited forty men a little more than a mile west, between us and the Alpine Visitor Center. They set up a camp where the pavement and dirt roads converged, at what we knew as the Endovalley campsite and picnic area. The helicopters made several more runs, depositing loads and loads of supplies, and then they were gone.

It seemed the soldiers below and west of us were going to be there for the long haul. They set up small tent-like shelters around the existing main building and started chopping down trees for firewood. Chasm Falls right next to them provided a water supply, and with all the elk in the valley they had plenty of food. They wouldn’t need to come our way. At least that much was a relief.

They seemed to have been placed there for no other reason than to guard one of the last routes out. At some point, we figured we’d have to deal with someone wandering around our space, either for curiosity’s sake or because we had drawn their attention. In any case, we knew if we hadn’t arrived here when we had and made all our supply runs, we’d be locked in a cold cave with little chance of survival. Timing and preparation were indeed everything. Okay…and luck.

In one day we’d gone from unfortunate but acceptable circumstances to being stuck in a bad spot with bad neighbors. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the soldiers to have a direct impact on us. The very first night they arrived we had a visitor.

It was a squirrel. But it scared the crap out of us. It turned out we had destroyed his nut cache, and he was trying to rebuild it. He found out quickly he wasn’t welcome, but the rodent served as a clear sign our defenses weren’t impenetrable, putting our nerves on high alert. Before the soldiers arrived, we would have found it funny. Not now. Squirrels . Dang animals. However, we were relieved the critter didn’t even know we were in the cave when he entered. It seemed we’d done a satisfactory job of limiting our visible existence.

It was nice we didn’t have to build a fire to stay warm. At this point there would have been no way to conceal it. We only ran the space heaters in the two sleeping rooms to keep the heat sources as far from the doors as possible. We had collected about sixty new car batteries and figured each battery could power our four space heaters and two lamps for a week or two, running nonstop. At worst we had twenty weeks of heat, at best double to triple that. It should be more than enough. It would have to be.

We had tons of pasta, rice, crackers, chips, dressings, sauces, M&M’s, and soup. We were well stocked on the essentials. You could barely call what we were doing “roughing it.” The concern was the cooking smell. We used the propane grill just for boiling, fearful any cooked meat scent could be carried down to the base of the mountain and towards the enemy camp. We weren’t going to be cooking any meat. That left us with summer sausage and beef jerky.